New York Times, Wall Street Journal will compete with San Francisco editions
By Andrew Vanacore, APThursday, October 15, 2009
NY Times launching San Francisco edition Friday
The New York Times is getting a jump on The Wall Street Journal in their battle to capture more readers in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The Times is launching its San Francisco edition on Friday, with expanded local coverage that also will begin to appear on Sundays.
The Wall Street Journal plans a similar step, but Dow Jones & Co. spokesman Robert Christie could not offer a launch date. He said the San Francisco edition will begin later this year.
Both newspapers see an opportunity to fill gaps left in some regions by financially ailing newspapers that have cut staff and reined in their coverage to focus on local issues. While the recession and the flight of readers and advertisers to the Web have hurt the Times and the Journal as well, they are still among the few U.S. newspapers that continue to staff foreign and national bureaus. Now they hope that puts them in position to offer readers a one-stop option by beefing up local offerings.
The Bay Area’s largest dailies, the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News, have both suffered deep staff cuts in the past few years.
At first, the Times’ 10-person San Francisco bureau will contribute extra stories, but the Times said it is in talks with local news organizations about providing material. The newspaper did not elaborate on who its partners will be.
It is looking to set up similar arrangements for editions in other major markets including Chicago, where both major dailies, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times, are operating under bankruptcy protection.
The Journal’s regional editions would be another sign of the direct competition with the Times that has developed since Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. bought the Journal’s parent company in 2007 and expanded its coverage of cultural and general interest news.
The San Francisco Chronicle’s publisher, Frank Vega, said his newspaper welcomes competition but doesn’t think the Times or the Journal pose a threat.
“We’ve been here for 145 years,” he said in an interview. “They don’t have the same size staff with the same kind of local knowledge we do.”
